]]>REGINA — Inmates at a Regina prison appear to have ended their hunger strike.

A Saskatchewan government spokeswoman says no lunch trays were refused today at the Regina Correctional Centre.

The official says the menu was similar to what was served on Thursday, which included a cold-cut sandwich, coleslaw and soup.

About 115 inmates had been refusing to eat, saying the quality of the food was poor.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said he’s seen the menu and he believes inmates are getting good choice and quality food.

He also said if people don’t like prison food, then don’t go to prison.

Prisoners first raised concerns in November, shortly after food services at the jail were switched to a private company called Compass Group.

The Ministry of Justice announced in August that it had signed a five-year agreement with the company to provide food services in eight of the province’s correctional facilities.

The government said the change would save nearly $12 million over the five years.

The company supplying the food has existed in Saskatchewan for more than three decades and also does business with the such as the City of Saskatoon and the University of Regina.

“There’s a lot of very credible public and private institutions that have been pretty satisfied … with their food quality,” Wall said Thursday.

“I’ve tried their food. If you’ve been at TCU Place in Saskatoon, you’ve tried the food. It’s pretty good. Tried the food in Moose Jaw at Mosaic Place when we had a caucus meeting there. It was pretty good as well.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/regina-jail-inmates-end-hunger-strike/feed/0Paul McCartney plays for first time in Regina, wrapping up leg of tourhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/paul-mccartney-plays-for-first-time-in-regina-wrapping-up-leg-of-tour/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/paul-mccartney-plays-for-first-time-in-regina-wrapping-up-leg-of-tour/#respondThu, 15 Aug 2013 10:35:20 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=413451REGINA – Rock legend Paul McCartney says he’s “excited” to play in Regina for the first time in his long and storied career, calling it a chance “to meet a…

In Andrew Salgado’s studio, a dozen canvases with looming deadlines hang: large, abstract portraits of melancholic faces in a cacophony of colour. Half-finished commissions fill one white wall; a nearly complete series for the international fair Art Basel covers a second, while a third is taken up with in-progress paintings for an exhibition in Copenhagen. If the past eight months is any indication, works in the latter two will sell instantly. The Regina-raised, London-based painter is riding something of an artistic hat trick: three sold-out shows in a row, including his first major independent exhibition, at London’s Beer.Lambert Contemporary last fall, a collaboration with London’s luxury department store Harvey Nichols in April, and his first Canadian solo show, which opened at Ottawa’s La Petite Mort gallery last month. The works aren’t just selling, they’re selling within days—in Ottawa’s case, to a list of international buyers before the exhibit even opened, which was enough to make gallery owner Guy Berube so giddy he “could cry.”

Salgado, 30, now has the enviable problem of trying to keep pace with demand. He has upcoming solo shows in Cape Town, South Africa, and in New York, where One Art Space gallery owner Elizabeth Villar gushes that he’s “a new Lucian Freud”—the Briton who pioneered abstract portraiture. Villar says she’s caught Salgado “at the perfect moment, at the rise of his career.” Yet he remains largely unknown in his home country, which makes one exhibition critical: his first institutional show, at the Art Gallery of Regina this fall. “It’s not important for people who don’t know where Regina is and don’t care,” he says, “but it’s important for me.”

Tall and handsome, with a quick smile, Salgado is very different from his atmospheric paintings. “An all-round nice guy,” says Cape Town gallery owner Chistopher Moller, “which is rare in this business.” Yet Salgado is driven by curiosity about the human heart’s darkest, saddest places, and his success was precipitated by a homophobic hate crime in 2008 that left his body bloodied, but his vision and voice sharpened. “For four years,” he says, “I’ve painted men, and I’ve painted quite aggressive, wounded, vulnerable-looking men.”

That style, which included what he self-deprecatingly calls his “floating heads”—distorted, tortured faces in dramatic blues, yellows and greens—has landed him in exhibitions alongside British art stars Tracey Emin and Gary Hume, as well as the Harvey Nichols commission, where his massive canvases share window space in London’s most moneyed postal code with $1,250 Christian Louboutin boots.

Berube says he’s never seen an artist who understands the business of art so well. An astute self-promoter, Salgado fills his Facebook profile with photos of in-progress work, signs his emails with resumé highlights and flies on his own dime to exhibit launches around the world to talk with anyone who bothers to show up. He has no time for “loosey-goosey, where’s the ground?” artists, he says. He spends six days a week in his studio.

He traces his “love for the figure” back to the Saskatchewan landscape paintings of his childhood. “There’s a strong Canadian tradition of painting figurative the way figurative should be painted, painting landscapes the way landscapes should be painted,” he says. Yet he’s obsessed with challenge and change. Grocery-store baron and art patron Frank Sobey once told him no one will buy a brown painting, so he made one. Because people are naturally drawn to blue, he’s avoiding it. Because people have for years praised the haunting eyes in his work, he’s shrunk them. “Every day is a kind of beautiful struggle to surprise myself,” he says. “I’ve always paid lip service to the marriage of figuration and abstraction, and my drive toward abstraction has been a bit restrained. So I’m pushing it.”

Regina will be a “whole different kind of pressure,” he says for a Canadian more inspired by Europeans like Francis Bacon. He’s ready. “I’m going to do the biggest, most frightening works I’ve ever done,” he says. “I want them to be crazy.” He’s called the homecoming show The Acquaintance.

It is my duty pursuant to section 21 of the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to lay upon the table a certified copy of the reports of the Federal Electoral Boundaries Commissions for the provinces of New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. These reports are referred permanently to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The Speaker of the House of Commons, Andrew Scheer, uttered these words Monday. As it happens, one of the reports he plopped down before the House touches closely upon the interests of his other (secret?) identity as Member for Regina-Qu’Appelle. The proposed riding map for Saskatchewan is by far the most controversial of the 10 now approaching finalization. It’s so controversial that one of the three commissioners appointed to draw the map refused to sign off on it, filing a minority report instead.

This is thought to be the first time that a Canadian boundaries commission has split irreconcilably in this way. It’s a nasty failure, since the whole point of a boundaries commission is to use logic to arrive at a broadly acceptable nonpartisan consensus. A conscientious government would be careful to avoid trouble of this sort from the outset, but apparently nobody saw it coming.

The problem isn’t partisanship as such. For the past few decades Saskatchewan’s federal riding map has had a unique “pie-slice” nature whereby there are no constituencies wholly within either of the two major cities. The good folks in southwest Regina, for example, have voted in the Palliser riding, alongside residents of Moose Jaw, since 1996. Voters in the northeast of the city are in the Regina-Qu’Appelle riding, mixing their votes with those of a half-dozen small towns like Indian Head and Wynyard—the latter being almost 200 kilometres away by road.

This arrangement was originally tolerated on the premise that in Saskatchewan there are no meaningful differences of culture or interest between the city and the country. All are one under the sign of the wheat sheaf. This seems to have become a perverse point of provincial pride, much like the lack of a sales tax in Alberta; the boundary commissioners were told often at public hearings that there is no such thing as “urban Saskatchewan” for political purposes. Two of the panelists dismissed this argument, snortingly, and created five new all-urban ridings, three in Saskatoon and two in Regina. The third member of the commission, David Marit, feels so strongly about the truth of the argument that he is willing to jeopardize the whole mapmaking exercise by refusing to sign a unanimous report.

What the people making this argument really mean, naturally, is that the “pie-slice” system has allowed rural Saskatchewan and the satellite cities to dominate or at least counterbalance Regina and Saskatoon in federal elections. Dissenter Marit is the president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities; I suppose he would have us believe he wants the big cities to remain divided for some other purpose than “divide and conquer.” But, of course, anybody who followed the 2011 election knows how the rural tail ends up wagging the urban dog under the existing system. The New Democrats picked up 32.3% of the vote provincewide, but this translated to zero seats in Parliament; the Liberals, with 8.6%, recaptured Ralph Goodale’s Wascana seat quite comfortably.

I took a look at the poll-by-poll results from the election, counting only the Regina and Saskatoon votes within the mixed ridings. These totals exclude advance and mobile polls.

As you can see, within the major cities the New Democrats are very competitive indeed with the Conservatives. (Though it’s also worth noting, lest any myths of extreme injustice and skulduggery flourish, that the Conservatives do seem to have “won” both metropolises.) Palliser MP Ray Boughen, a former mayor of Moose Jaw, would have gotten his clock cleaned if not for the Moose Javian votes. Farmer Nettie Wiebe, the NDP candidate in Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, won a majority in the city and got beaten narrowly (for the third time in a row) on the strength of rural votes. And, sure enough, Speaker Scheer got fewer votes within Regina than the NDP’s Fred Clipsham.

It remains to be seen how well Thomas Mulcair’s “Western strategy” will ultimately work out, but in essence the Conservatives will start the 2015 campaign a couple seats down in Saskatchewan by virtue of the new electoral map alone. That is assuming the Conservatives in the Procedure Committee don’t use David Marit’s dissent as a pretext to go after the new map with a fat blue pencil. Vigilance is urged.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/authors/colby-cosh/the-scheer-madness-of-saskatchewans-boundary-battle/feed/27Saskatchewan: The ‘it’ place to behttp://www.macleans.ca/general/saskatchewan-the-it-place-to-be/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/saskatchewan-the-it-place-to-be/#respondSun, 23 Dec 2012 01:47:39 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=329743Booming economy makes land of living skies a place to set down roots

For diners in the northwest Regina restaurant, it’s mouthwatering. For chef and owner Brett Huber, it’s a dream come full circle.

“When I was growing up, all I wanted to do was get out of here, but now that I’m back it’s like this is where I want to be,” he said.

Huber was born and raised in Regina. He moved to Vancouver when he was 24 for culinary school and worked around British Columbia, as well as in England.

But home was calling.

“I wanted to start a family and I wanted to basically start a restaurant.”

Huber and wife, Kristi, moved to Regina in 2007 — about the time Saskatchewan became the “it” province, the place to be in Canada.

People from every part of the country were flocking in. Statistics Canada figures showed at the time that Saskatchewan’s population growth in 2007-08 was the strongest since the early 1970s. For the first time, the province led the pack when it came to interprovincial migration.

Employment was strong and a booming economy — bolstered by potash, oil and gas — made Saskatchewan a rags-to-riches story.

“Unknown to me, the boom was happening while I was away. Immediately once I got back to Regina I realized there was a much different feel here in the province,” recalled Huber.

“It was an exciting time to be in Regina and Saskatchewan, for that matter.”

In 2008, it appeared the boom might be over. The recession dragged down economies around the globe.

Premier Brad Wall warned in March 2010 that Saskatchewan — the province that initially defied the economic downturn — would have to make tough decisions to balance its upcoming budget. The government was facing a challenge because of plummeting revenue from potash, a pink mineral used in fertilizer.

Resource prices are still soft and are affecting Saskatchewan’s bottom line. A budget update released in November noted a drop of more than $400 million in potash and oil revenue. However, the government is forecasting a small surplus and Wall is quick to note that Saskatchewan was the only province to present a balanced budget this year.

The premier said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press that the recession forced the government to be more cautious with spending.

But he said there’s evidence that the land of living skies is still where people want to set down roots.

Census data released last February by Statistics Canada shows the population in the metropolitan area of Regina increased by eight per cent since the last census in 2006. Saskatoon, the largest city in the province, increased in numbers by 11.4 per cent.

“We can look at the number of people that continue to move here. We have 80,000 people over the last five years and we sort of pushed over some important records on population growth this year,” said Wall.

“We see investment. We see companies like Mosaic declaring their Canadian headquarters and moving 80 to 100 jobs here to the capital city.

“So you don’t have to take the government’s word for it. We’re still the ‘it’ province because people are voting with their feet and companies are voting with their investment.”

Mosaic, one of the world’s leaders in potash crop nutrients, is to be the lead tenant in a new office tower that opened in Regina on Dec. 7. It’s the first new office tower in the capital in 20 years.

While there might be more office space, housing has been a problem since Saskatchewan’s economy took off.

Prices have soared since 2007 and rental units are in demand as more people move to the province. Regina, at one per cent, has the lowest vacancy rate of all major centres in Canada.

For the first time, a homeless shelter has been established in the city of Estevan, a hub of oil and gas activity in southeast Saskatchewan near the U.S. border.

Brenna Lea Nickel, a minister with St. Paul’s United Church, said jobs are a big draw.

“What we’re seeing is that folks are coming from all over the country and in some cases even from the United States. They seem to get the word that, OK ,there’s lots of jobs to be had in Estevan, but they’re not getting the word that there isn’t any short-term or affordable housing,” said Nickel.

“I shouldn’t say not that there isn’t, but it can’t keep up with the growing population.”

Brenna said the Salvation Army estimates as many as 15 people are sleeping in their cars each night and as many as 40 people could be sleeping outside or couch surfing.

“Most of these people are coming from a home in some way and are hoping to make a better start here and just don’t realize until they get here that it’ll be so hard to find some place to stay.”

Despite the housing challenges, reports suggest that Saskatchewan is on solid footing.

The Conference Board of Canada said in its provincial outlook for autumn 2012 that the western provinces remain in the best position to ride out the current global economic weakness.

It also said that for the most part, western Canadian provinces have been relatively shielded from the fiscal and economic troubles lingering in external markets. The economies of Saskatchewan and Alberta in particular have performed strongly, and their near-term prospects are more favourable than those for the rest of the country.

“There’s opportunity here and there might not be that opportunity elsewhere,” said Wall.

“There’s a quality of life here so if people come check out the province, they’ll know that there’s an excellent education system and in health care, we’re trying to make the improvements we need so that people aren’t on wait lists as long as they used to be.

“I think it’s the whole package,” Wall added.

Huber said the opportunity to open Jack Keaton’s, which is named for his two eldest children, a year ago was both “scary” and “exhilarating.”

Huber believes moving back and starting the restaurant were good decisions.

“People are optimistic about what the future holds here” he said.

“Years ago, it was quite the opposite. It was people were just depressed and, you know, ‘Nothing ever changes here.’ This was the last place in the world to get any great news.

“It’s very evident now that people are moving to the province instead of moving away.”

]]>This interactive graphic is best viewed in Firefox, Safari or Chrome. Click here for instructions.

The commodity boom is rewriting the list of the “haves” and “have-nots” in Canada. Unlike in the U.S., where the highest per capita incomes tend to be found in and around the biggest metropolitan centres, Toronto is nowhere near the top of Canada’s rank of wealthiest urban areas, while Montreal and Vancouver don’t even make the cut. Small and mid-sized cities are clearly winning the day.

The biggest dots on our map are, of course, in Alberta, with tiny Fort McMurray, right next to the Athabasca oil sands, topping the charts. It may not legally be a “city”—the former fur-trading post was granted the title in 1980 only to lose it 15 years later—but it sure shows all the symptoms of a boomtown. A single family home in the community of 61,000—where daylight lasts as little as seven hours in the dead of winter—cost upwards of $750,000 on average in November. That’s even more than in downtown Toronto, where the going price last month was around $740,000.

One needn’t look much further east to find more stories of vertiginous growth, happy realtors and chronic labour shortages. Welcome to Saskatchewan, the only province planning to run a budget surplus this fiscal year. The resource boom that started a decade ago is now prominently on display in Regina and Saskatoon, which boast, respectively, the lowest unemployment and highest population growth rates of any metropolitan area in Canada.

The title of hottest real estate market in 2013 will likely belong to St. John’s, however. RE/MAX sees home prices in the Nfld. capital climbing six per cent next year, faster than anywhere else and bucking the trend in Vancouver and Toronto, where the optimists are now predicting a soft landing rather than a crash. Sure, St. John’s still has a way to go to reach the top of our chart but the city is already neck-and-neck with Calgary and Edmonton in terms of employment growth. If the current trend holds up, who knows, St. John’s could soon leave Toronto in the dust.

MAP: Hover over the dots on the map to view more information about cities and per capita income and to see the tool bar in the upper right-hand corner. You can also zoom-in by double-clicking on the map. To grab and move the map, press SHIFT and click. Click on the “home” symbol to restore the original settings.

BAR CHART: Click on the symbol next to “Per capita income,” below the chart, to rearrange it from the lowest to the highest per capita income. Click again to order it alphabetically.

Use the “Province” tool bar on the right to view select provinces on both the map and the bar chart.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/economy/economicanalysis/interactive-canadas-richest-cities/feed/17Ever considered moving to Saskatchewan?http://www.macleans.ca/work/jobs/ever-considered-moving-to-saskatchewan/
http://www.macleans.ca/work/jobs/ever-considered-moving-to-saskatchewan/#respondTue, 18 Dec 2012 14:43:51 +0000http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/?p=49652The boom has slowed, but the province is still growing

For diners in the northwest Regina restaurant, it’s mouthwatering. For chef and owner Brett Huber, it’s a dream come full circle.

“When I was growing up, all I wanted to do was get out of here, but now that I’m back it’s like this is where I want to be,” he said.

Huber was born and raised in Regina. He moved to Vancouver when he was 24 for culinary school and worked around British Columbia, as well as in England.

But home was calling.

“I wanted to start a family and I wanted to basically start a restaurant.”

Huber and wife, Kristi, moved to Regina in 2007 — about the time Saskatchewan became the “it” province, the place to be in Canada.

People from every part of the country were flocking in. Statistics Canada figures showed at the time that Saskatchewan’s population growth in 2007-08 was the strongest since the early 1970s. For the first time, the province led the pack when it came to interprovincial migration.

Employment was strong and a booming economy — bolstered by potash, oil and gas — made Saskatchewan a rags-to-riches story.

“Unknown to me, the boom was happening while I was away. Immediately once I got back to Regina I realized there was a much different feel here in the province,” recalled Huber.

“It was an exciting time to be in Regina and Saskatchewan, for that matter.”

In 2008, it appeared the boom might be over. The recession dragged down economies around the globe.

Premier Brad Wall warned in March 2010 that Saskatchewan — the province that initially defied the economic downturn — would have to make tough decisions to balance its upcoming budget. The government was facing a challenge because of plummeting revenue from potash, a pink mineral used in fertilizer.

Resource prices are still soft and are affecting Saskatchewan’s bottom line. A budget update released in November noted a drop of more than $400 million in potash and oil revenue. However, the government is forecasting a small surplus and Wall is quick to note that Saskatchewan was the only province to present a balanced budget this year.

The premier said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press that the recession forced the government to be more cautious with spending.

But he said there’s evidence that the land of living skies is still where people want to set down roots.

Census data released last February by Statistics Canada shows the population in the metropolitan area of Regina increased by eight per cent since the last census in 2006. Saskatoon, the largest city in the province, increased in numbers by 11.4 per cent.

“We can look at the number of people that continue to move here. We have 80,000 people over the last five years and we sort of pushed over some important records on population growth this year,” said Wall.

“We see investment. We see companies like Mosaic declaring their Canadian headquarters and moving 80 to 100 jobs here to the capital city.

“So you don’t have to take the government’s word for it. We’re still the ‘it’ province because people are voting with their feet and companies are voting with their investment.”

Mosaic, one of the world’s leaders in potash crop nutrients, is to be the lead tenant in a new office tower that opened in Regina on Dec. 7. It’s the first new office tower in the capital in 20 years.

While there might be more office space, housing has been a problem since Saskatchewan’s economy took off.

Prices have soared since 2007 and rental units are in demand as more people move to the province. Regina, at one per cent, has the lowest vacancy rate of all major centres in Canada.

For the first time, a homeless shelter has been established in the city of Estevan, a hub of oil and gas activity in southeast Saskatchewan near the U.S. border.

Brenna Lea Nickel, a minister with St. Paul’s United Church, said jobs are a big draw.

“What we’re seeing is that folks are coming from all over the country and in some cases even from the United States. They seem to get the word that, OK ,there’s lots of jobs to be had in Estevan, but they’re not getting the word that there isn’t any short-term or affordable housing,” said Nickel.

“I shouldn’t say not that there isn’t, but it can’t keep up with the growing population.”

Brenna said the Salvation Army estimates as many as 15 people are sleeping in their cars each night and as many as 40 people could be sleeping outside or couch surfing.

“Most of these people are coming from a home in some way and are hoping to make a better start here and just don’t realize until they get here that it’ll be so hard to find some place to stay.”

Despite the housing challenges, reports suggest that Saskatchewan is on solid footing.

The Conference Board of Canada said in its provincial outlook for autumn 2012 that the western provinces remain in the best position to ride out the current global economic weakness.

It also said that for the most part, western Canadian provinces have been relatively shielded from the fiscal and economic troubles lingering in external markets. The economies of Saskatchewan and Alberta in particular have performed strongly, and their near-term prospects are more favourable than those for the rest of the country.

“There’s opportunity here and there might not be that opportunity elsewhere,” said Wall.

“There’s a quality of life here so if people come check out the province, they’ll know that there’s an excellent education system and in health care, we’re trying to make the improvements we need so that people aren’t on wait lists as long as they used to be.

“I think it’s the whole package,” Wall added.

Huber said the opportunity to open Jack Keaton’s, which is named for his two eldest children, a year ago was both “scary” and “exhilarating.”

Huber believes moving back and starting the restaurant were good decisions.

“People are optimistic about what the future holds here” he said.

“Years ago, it was quite the opposite. It was people were just depressed and, you know, ‘Nothing ever changes here.’ This was the last place in the world to get any great news.

“It’s very evident now that people are moving to the province instead of moving away.”

Aggravated assault is as bad as it gets before the charge is attempted murder. The Criminal Code charge of aggravated assault is laid against anyone who “wounds, maims, disfigures or endangers the life of the complainant.” It’s a world of hurt that’s best avoided, so eschew dingy bars, dark alleys, harsh words, and all jokes about Saskatchewan. Yes, Saskatoon and Regina top the list, while Edmonton is right behind. In fact, seven of the 10 worst cities for aggravated assault are in Manitoba or points west. Not that we’re picking a fight or anything.

Students with vehicles are circling the parking lots to hunt for spots at the University of Regina — and they say it’s making them late for classes.

Many are frustrated because they had purchased parking passes in advance, but the university sold 25 per cent more passes than there are spots.

As many as 6,250 drivers could compete for 5,000 spaces at any given time, reports Global Regina. It’s unlikely that all drivers would ever show up simultaneously, but demand for spots is clearly outstripping supply.

Parking is increasingly difficult at other schools too. A Dalhousie University professor quit his job in August because, he said, it’s nearly impossible to find a parking spot. There are only 2,000 stalls for 20,000 staff and students at the Halifax school. Dalhousie sells as many as 3,300 passes per year.

The University of Regina was buzzing this month with talk of academic muzzling off-campus. Emily Eaton, an assistant professor of geography, was a week away from presenting “Solidarity with Palestine: The Case for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions Against Israel,” the second of 12 lunchtime talks scheduled over the summer in Regina’s Victoria Park, when she says the coordinator of the series told her the topic was under scrutiny and asked to know more about it. The lecture series, titled “Profs in the Park,” was to be produced in partnership with the Regina Downtown Business Improvement District (RDBID). The next day, she says, the university told her the RDBID had cancelled her event. “This is a clear case of a city-level administration stepping in and saying what its citizens should and shouldn’t be able to hear, and therefore defining the terrain of public debate,” says Eaton. All the professors scheduled to present—on everything from “Gardening with Native Plants” to “Current Trends in Policing”—withdrew from the series. “The profs and the dean collectively decided we’d rather pull all the presentations than be subject to censorship,” says Eaton. (The lecture series has since taken on a new name, “Profs in the City,” and has been relocated to a private space: Neutral Ground Contemporary Art Forum. Eaton presented her lecture to a packed house on June 14.)

Judith Veresuk, executive director of the RDBID, says her organization isn’t to blame for pulling the plug on the original series. She claims that RDBID contacted the university to clarify the content of the talk after the city and her organization received complaints about its subject matter. And instead of providing more info, says Veresuk, the university pulled the lecture. “The next thing I know,” she says, “the university is crying censorship and cancelled the series.”

]]>Over the last few days, Michael Ignatieff has discussed astrophysics with a six-year-old girl (true story), purchased two cakes from a Vancouver bakery, participated in Regina’s spring pow wow, shot a little pool and played with a bulldozer simulator in Dettah and shaken hands at BBQs in St. Isidore and Yellowknife.

Yesterday he took questions at two town hall meetings: the first in Vancouver, the second a few hours later in Victoria. The topics broached by members of the public during these discussions included: cooperation among parties in Parliament, elected MPs who change their party allegiance, airport security, science, taxation, improving access to generic drugs for developing countries, how to assist older Canadians in their retirement without raising taxes on younger Canadians, the case of a Canadian citizen imprisoned in Mexico, copyright law, child poverty, farmed salmon, Canada’s role in the Middle East, the possible health hazards of genetically modified organisms, Canada’s complicity in a 9/11 conspiracy, the recognition of foreign credentials, mental health, marijuana legalization, the high cost of dental work, dysfunction in the House of Commons, Internet usage rates, registered disability savings plans, proportional representation, the use of uranium in bombs allegedly dropped on Libya, halibut fishing, students and funding for the CBC.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/a-statistically-unrepresentative-sample-of-canadian-concerns/feed/85Someone call Larry Bertuzzi to sort this outhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/someone-call-larry-bertuzzi-to-sort-this-out/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/someone-call-larry-bertuzzi-to-sort-this-out/#respondThu, 10 Feb 2011 14:03:38 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=171347The Conservatives may or may not allow gas tax revenues to be used to build a hockey arena in Quebec City, but the mayor of Quebec City isn’t open to…

]]>The Conservatives may or may not allow gas tax revenues to be used to build a hockey arena in Quebec City, but the mayor of Quebec City isn’t open to using the city’s gas tax funding to build that arena and he and Quebec Premier Jean Charest are now ready to go ahead without the federal government’s involvement. Regardless, the mayor of Edmonton is upset, the city of St. Catharines is interested and the city of Regina is befuddled.

Chuck McDonald, director of finance for the City of Regina, said out of the $10.66 million in gas tax received for 2011, $4 million will go to bridge renewal, $1.18 million is for street renewal, $3.66 is for new buses and $1.82 million is for the new landfill. Such spending is typical for the gas tax dollars.

“If I understand correctly and they would designate that facilities would be eligible, it really is a question of robbing Peter to pay Paul, because if we were to dedicate it to a facility, it means we’d have to find other funding for street infrastructure or the fleet. The pie stays the same size,” McDonald said. “It would provide more flexibility, but we’ve got our core things that we have to invest in. We would have to find funding somewhere else for these things.”

“I think there certainly is a reaction,” said Regina Qu’Appelle MP Andrew Scheer in an interview Tuesday. “I am hearing — and I have been from the get-go — I have been hearing from a lot of constituents who have a great deal of concern with tax dollars being spent on these types of facilities.”

… Scheer said he had read Bernier’s blog post on the subject and “I thought he made some very good points.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/team-bernier/feed/0Call this number nowhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/call-this-number-now/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/call-this-number-now/#respondThu, 09 Sep 2010 22:44:20 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=146474If you or your town would like to host a large stadium, arena or field suitable for hosting professional sports activities, but don’t have the money to build one yourself,…

]]>If you or your town would like to host a large stadium, arena or field suitable for hosting professional sports activities, but don’t have the money to build one yourself, federal government operators are standing by to hear your request.

“In terms of financing major sports facilities, there are demands here, there are demands in Quebec City, I am aware of demands elsewhere,” Harper told reporters Thursday in Saskatoon … “In terms of financing these things going forward, we’re going to have to respect the precedents we have had in the past and be sure any treatment we’re prepared to make to one city we’re prepared to make to all,” said Harper.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/call-this-number-now/feed/0Get in linehttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/get-in-line/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/get-in-line/#respondThu, 09 Sep 2010 17:30:37 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=146213Saskatchewan is quite keen to see a new football stadium in Regina.“We are in serious negotiations and we’re relying on our members of Parliament to carry that message to …

]]>Saskatchewan is quite keen to see a new football stadium in Regina.

“We are in serious negotiations and we’re relying on our members of Parliament to carry that message to the federal table,” Cheveldayoff added, declaring that “we need them to be a full partner.” He said that means “full participation” and federal funding for “a large percentage” of the facility — in the “range” of 25 per cent.

“My job is to encourage them and give them the information they need to make a decision of that magnitude,” he continued. “It’s going very well. I’m liking what I’m hearing. I could see a way where they could do that and I’m encouraging them to look at that amount. Time is of the essence. It’s getting to a critical point.”

Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale figures the federal government should contribute something in the neighbourhood of $100-million.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/get-in-line/feed/0What it’s like to be stalked and harassed by the same man—for 36 yearshttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/it-all-started-with-a-cup-of-coffee/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/it-all-started-with-a-cup-of-coffee/#commentsThu, 26 Aug 2010 20:05:59 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=143279A Regina woman tells how it all started with a cup of coffee

The date that changed Cathy Kaip’s life was one of those rambling metaphysical coffee-house conversations that are part of any well-furnished youth. The year was 1974. Kaip, an 18-year-old nursing student, had hit it off with Gerald Klein, then a 27-year-old musician, at a wedding. When he heard that his daughter was going out to see an older man, one trying to extricate himself from an unhappy marriage, Kaip’s Roman Catholic father responded with gentle firmness.

“He said to me, ‘You realize he’s a married man, he has a child,’ ” she recalls. “ ‘This will be the first and last time you go out with him.’ So that’s what I told Gerry: this is the first and last date. I did say I thought it was unfair that Dad should be telling me what to do, but I told him, ‘He’s my dad and I respect his wishes.’ ”

Those orders, however, weren’t in any particular conflict with her own feelings. “Gerry wasn’t really date material,” says Kaip. “He was a friend I was trying to help through a difficult time.” The pair spent their date talking about the moral and scriptural aspects of marriage, Klein’s break from the Catholic Church, and his experiments with other religious movements of the turbulent ’70s. “He was the sort who could find anything he wanted to find in the Bible,” she remembers.

Unbeknownst to Kaip, what appeared to be one conversation was actually two. For her, it was nothing but a bull session with an amusing older gentleman. But inside Klein’s head, some regrettable, wrong synapse had begun to fire. It wouldn’t stop for the next 36 years.

On Aug. 9, 2010, Saskatchewan provincial court Judge Dennis Fenwick renewed a peace bond that had been imposed on Gerry Klein after his release from prison in December 2006. Klein had served a three-year sentence for criminally harassing Kaip, who is now, in her own words, a “pudgy, 54-year-old grandmother.”

The original bond barred Klein from an eight-block area surrounding Kaip’s Regina home, and ordered him to refrain from contacting her family. Judge Fenwick made headlines by peremptorily extending its scope to the entire city. In effect, Klein, though not charged with any new crime, has been banished from his hometown for a year.

Cathy Kaip’s 1974 coffee date with Klein wasn’t the end of their relationship. “Before we could even meet again, he called me, crying, saying ‘Cathy, I need to talk to you right now,’ ” she says. “He was in trouble with his church because his pastor had told him that he had to stay with his wife.” Within weeks, Cathy had found an actual boyfriend, but she stayed in touch with her unhappy and confused friend, corresponding with him when he briefly moved to British Columbia in 1976.

It was when she got engaged to Richard Kaip in July 1976 that things changed. The phone calls became more frequent and troubling. Klein told Cathy that the devil was keeping them apart; he blamed her father for thwarting their romance. He warned her priest—and, a week before the wedding, her fiancé—that the imminent marriage had been coerced by her dad, and was thus invalid.

The wedding went ahead and the lovebirds moved to New Brunswick. Soon they got the first letter from what would be an infinite sequence of lawyers retained by Gerald James Klein. It warned that Klein was contemplating a lawsuit for breach of promise of marriage. Klein backed down but continued to pen increasingly ominous missives to Cathy Kaip.

“I committed myself to you quite involuntarily, a long time ago, and nothing I can do is going to change it,” said one. “It would take a supernatural intervention by God Himself to cause me to turn my back on you.” Another read: “I’ll never be able to forget you now, Cathy, not as long as I live, unless you died.”

When the first of Kaip’s three children was born, she visited her parents in Regina and was soon greeted with the sight of Klein pacing in front of their house. He seemed, in a time before the popular concept of a lovestruck “stalker” had become commonplace, to have uncanny access to information about Kaip’s whereabouts, life, and nursing work. As she moved from army base to army base with her husband, a non-commissioned logistics specialist in the Canadian Forces, Kaip’s pursuer always managed to get the new address. “It’s still hard to make people understand my situation,” she says, decades later. “I’m not bleeding, I haven’t been raped or beaten to death, so what’s the big deal?”

Kaip’s father died on Jan. 5, 1981. When she returned to her parents’ house from the hospital, a sheriff was there to serve her with the breach of contract lawsuit Klein had once abandoned. A new phase had begun.

That first suit was thrown out. Another one, launched in 1983, was bounced. A 1984 slander action began when Klein heard second-hand that Kaip supposedly blamed his harassment for hastening her father’s demise. Klein personally took over questioning of Kaip, then eight months pregnant, at an examination for discovery; one judge later described the 6½-hour session as “the product of an unbalanced, obsessive bully.” Thanks to some legal side issues, that suit got to the Supreme Court of Canada before fizzling out. Kaip had spent tens of thousands on legal defence, and at least four suits had been dismissed “with costs”—costs Klein never paid.

Kaip had been hospitalized for stress in 1978, and was ill again after Klein’s creepy interrogation, going into labour prematurely and later requiring treatment for depression. Beginning in 1990, however, Klein disappeared from her life for a while. “Did my problems cause a strain in my marriage? Yes,” she says, “but I had a wonderful 18 years.” The monumentally patient Master Warrant Officer Kaip was struck down by myeloid leukemia in 1995, and at his funeral, standing at the graveside, Cathy was handed a sympathy card by a relative.

Opening it, she says, was the ultimate low point in her strange saga. “It said ‘God be with you at this time.’ And it was from the last person I wanted to hear from.”

Kaip retreated to the home she had shared with her husband in Shilo, Man., but it was no refuge; she says Klein sent her a cassette tape of a telephone argument he had had with Richard, along with a note reading, “If you want to hear more, you know where to reach me.” Cathy soon decided that if she was going to be stalked, she might as well suffer nearer her family. The cards and letters from Klein resumed in earnest; in 1996, exactly one day after she moved into a new Regina home, a rose and an unmistakable “welcome home” note materialized on the doorstep.

Klein continued to profess affection, writing lines like, “Jesus still loves you and so do I” and “I never have been nor will I ever be your enemy.” But he continued to pursue half-baked legal attacks. In September 1998, a judge finally issued an order requiring Klein to obtain prior court consent before commencing any further lawsuits; another forbade Klein from “molesting, annoying, harassing, communicating, or otherwise interfering” with Kaip.

Harassment law had changed much in favour of victims by then, but Kaip found that her long ordeal and her voluminous documentation, now swollen to fill a huge Rubbermaid container, did little more than make police roll their eyes. If she walked into her own church and found that Klein had “coincidentally” joined the choir—which happened in 1998—what could a cop or a prosecutor make of it?

“The usual reaction when I’ve tried to tell my story to someone in authority is, ‘Lady, I don’t have time for this,’ ” she says. But her message to other stalking victims, one she has occasionally delivered to women’s groups, is to resist discouragement and to keep making records. “If you want to get anywhere with the court system, you write it down, you sign it, you date it, and you keep it,” she says. “Somewhere, sometime, somebody along the way will listen.”

Klein crossed the official line on Oct. 8, 2002, when a neighbour noticed a station wagon parked outside Kaip’s home and called police. They found Klein in it, eating chicken and holding a pair of binoculars. A psychiatric evaluation found that Klein has a “seriously disturbed personality” but is not, by a legal standard, mentally ill. A year after his arrest, a Regina judge handed down a three-year criminal harassment sentence, describing Klein as “a vengeful and controlling man.”

Upon hearing the sentence, Klein, who has informed his latest legal representative that he is unavailable for comment to Maclean’s, told CBC cameras, “I’ve accepted the fact that it’s over [but] I have no interest in pursuing any other relationship with anyone else.” Asked if he regretted the pain he had caused Kaip, he answered, “the answer has always been ‘No,’ because I’m not the one that caused this problem.” In prison, Klein rejected counselling and displays of remorse so firmly that he was refused the usual statutory release after two-thirds of his official sentence.

Released in December 2006, Klein was eventually placed under a renewed order to stay out of Kaip’s neighbourhood and away from her family. That bond expired in August 2008, but even before it ran out Klein was spotted pacing outside the home of Kaip’s sister. At this month’s hearing over renewal of the bond, the Crown also introduced evidence that Klein had been sending out inquiries about Kaip’s business activities and had written to her divorced second husband.

Klein’s lawyer, Brad Tilling, noted that his client has never, through 36 years, behaved violently or threatened Kaip explicitly with anything but legal action. Klein told the judge he wanted Kaip brought in to testify so she could “answer for her lies” and admitted he still wants to hear the “truth” about her original feelings for him.

The idea of total exclusion from the city seems to have been brought up, not by the Crown, but by Judge Fenwick. An early report from the hearing by the Regina Leader-Post (whose reporter Barb Pacholik has published over 10,000 words on this ghastly drama since 2003) quoted the judge as musing over whether “[Kaip’s] prison shouldn’t be made a little larger after 30 years.” Now that Fenwick has followed through on that intention, Klein, who makes his living driving trucks and delivery vehicles, has been given three weeks to leave town.

Klein has informed Crown prosecutor Michael Morris of his intention to appeal. But fighting an order for a peace bond, even one of unprecedented harshness, might not be easy. Appeal courts hesitate to second-guess a trial judge’s finding of facts, and a peace bond consists of little more than a bare declaration that evidence of possible harm to an innocent person exists.

Barring some unexpected legal wizardry, Cathy Kaip may be able to relent slightly, for a while, from the exhausting vigilance she has practised, out of habit, throughout her adult life. “I’m looking forward to having the freedom to walk the street without checking behind me every second step,” she says. “If I’m walking my dog and the dog stops to sniff, I do a 360. Maybe I can take a step back from that a bit. Maybe I can go to my son’s house and babysit the grandchildren and not be afraid to answer the door or the phone.”

She would like to see the law of peace bonds changed to extend their maximum length beyond 12 months, since the process of renewing them can take much longer than that. “I was ecstatic,” she says when asked how she reacted to Judge Fenwick’s decision. “I was very happy to hear that he’s gonna be away from me for a whole year. It also gives me a little misgiving that it’s only for a year.”

Troubled North Central Regina has seen more than its share of bad news. The grim combination of Aboriginal poverty, drugs, gangs and crime moved Maclean’s to call it the “worst neighbourhood in Canada” in January 2007. That attention, however, seemed to spark a new attitude among residents and government. Since last year, a whole range of new initiatives have flooded the area. The latest is the opening of a new urban reserve.

Urban reserves offer natives the tax advantages of traditional rural reserves, but in downtown areas with greater economic opportunity. Canada’s first such reserve was established in 1988 in Saskatoon, and there are now approximately 30 across the province. Regina’s is the first for the city.

“Our membership is very excited about our new urban development,” says Piapot First Nation Chief John Rockthunder, whose main reserve is 60 km outside Regina. Creeland Mini-mart, the first business on the new downtown reserve, will start pumping gas and selling snacks on Nov. 6.

Rockthunder expects to hire 21 Piapot members to run the gas bar and store, and promises that profits will go to housing and education on the main reserve. Eventually, he hopes to deliver social programs for natives living in North Central. “Our priority is that we have to look after our own,” he says.

The initiative is not without controversy. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation opposes the mini-mart, arguing that it’s unfair to non-native businesses. The store’s native employees won’t pay income tax, and cigarettes and gas will be tax-free for native customers. “I welcome this new business to the area,” says Lee Harding of the CTF. “But the real issue is whether a tax system that discriminates on the basis of race is good for Canada.”